‘I’m already 40 – there is no time to waste’

She has the most recognisable initials in French cinema: BB. But Bérénice Bejo is no Brigitte Bardot. Where the pouting, bikini-clad blonde bombshell engorged the lusty sensibilities of men worldwide in And God Created Woman, Bejo’s charm in a cloche hat and flapper dress won more innocent, though no less global, audience affection in 2011’s The Artist.

Argentine-born Bejo cuts a very different figure too. Whip-thin, in tight black jeans and donkey jacket, her dark eyes don’t offer languorous, come-hither looks, instead flicking restlessly back and forth. “I am already 40, in another 40 I could be dead,” she says. “There’s no time to waste.”

That’s why we meet in the bowels of the Opera House in Paris, where she is working with a choreographer on a dance piece set to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. She has rehearsals in the afternoons, performances the following week, and is also on stage every night in a romantic comedy. Oh – and she has two small children, whom, despite her success, she prefers to bring up without phalanxes of helpers. No wonder finding an hour or so to chat about her new film, After Love, is a struggle.

But perhaps the hurlyburly is just an inevitable result of the way her career has turned out. Just over a decade ago, when she was 28, she was still sleeping on her sister’s sofa, failing to string together odd acting successes into anyone’s idea of stardom. Certainly not hers.

Then she landed a role in a French James Bond spoof called OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies. Not only was the film a success in France, but the director, Michel Hazanavicius, became Bejo’s husband. And, not long afterwards, Hazanavicius decided to cash in all the creative capital he had amassed making OSS 117, and a successful sequel, to embark on the project he had always dreamed of: directing a silent movie.

The rest – the struggle for finance, the endless tap-dancing takes, the gathering chatter at festivals, the cute dog, the Harvey Weinstein buy-up at Cannes – is

Bérénice Bejo was ancient in Hollywood terms when she got her break. Which is why she is so manic now, she tells Harry de Quetteville